Donald Trump is speaking harsh truths, and the world needs to listen

This man is completely unfit for high office, but his voters have not gone madCredit:
Darren Hauck/Getty

The result of the US presidential election affects the whole world, but that does not mean Americans welcome advice on how to vote from outside their own country. When a group of Britons decided to write to Americans in the swing state of Iowa in 2004 to urge them not to vote for George Bush, one reply read: “Stay the hell out of our business, you limp-wristed, knock-kneed, bed-wetting, euro-wimps.”

With a wonderful American mixture of directness and politeness, it was signed off: “And have a nice day”.

"Trump’s bullying attitude to other countries would diminish the power of the USA by destroying its moral authority"

Two characteristics make Trump fundamentally unfit to be president: his attitude to women and the way he treats rivals. The first of these, including crude and offensive remarks about female interviewers and candidates, shows deeply patronising instincts.

This isn’t just foul manners. It really matters because the way to liberate the greatest quantity of untapped talent in the 21st century is to achieve the full social, political and economic empowerment of women. Having a leader of the world’s most powerful country who shows no recognition of that cannot be a good idea.

Watch | Women rally against Donald Trump after his abortion comments

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His insulting response to rivals is another disastrous weakness in a potential global leader. The belittling of political opponents – “Lying Ted”, “Little Marco” and so on – shows no grasp of the fact that any president must work with them in Congress the minute he or she is elected. Even worse, Trump’s bullying attitude to other countries – telling Mexico it will have to pay for a wall along its border – would be utterly counterproductive and diminish the power of the USA by destroying its moral authority and crucial ability to persuade others to act.

"My experience of 30 years of elections is that when you think voters might have gone mad, they are actually trying to tell you something"

Yet Trump is a formidable campaigner, and this week’s Wisconsin primary result points to a contested convention rather than the end of his candidacy. He has the chance of a huge fight-back in New York the week after next. Even if the tide has turned against him, it will be important not to believe politics can now go back to normal.

For one thing, Ted Cruz, the Wisconsin winner, might be little better. It is a sign of how desperate the Republican establishment has become that they are pleased by the victory of an ultra-conservative, evangelical Tea Party candidate. Cruz espouses a foreign policy as dangerous as Trump’s but in different ways: sabre rattling instead of isolationist. Even if Cruz continues to do better at the ballot box, that should not distract from the fact that many millions of people have been voting for Trump, and my experience of 30 years of elections is that when you think voters might have gone mad, they are actually trying to tell you something.

I used to sit in Nato meetings as foreign secretary, listening to American generals expressing alarm that the US contributed over 60 per cent of the defence spending of the alliance in the Cold War, yet stumps up nearly 75 per cent now. Some European countries, including Britain, have recently committed themselves to higher defence spending. But Trump’s policy, and the support it receives from voters, is an early-warning indicator of a potentially vast strategic problem heading our way.

With turmoil in the Middle East likely to produce millions of refugees for a long time to come, Europe will have a greater need to protect its borders, intervene abroad and stabilise failing nations. But this will happen at precisely the time America achieves energy independence and is becoming less willing to shoulder the burdens of its allies. The strategic interests of the democracies on each side of the Atlantic could diverge, in a way that has not happened since the end of the Second World War.

In the next few years, British, French and even German leaders, armed forces and security agencies will really have to show they are useful – to defeat the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, deter Russia and stop new conflicts from spreading. Otherwise they might find that on an increasing range of issues, they’re on their own.

Trump’s other main policy with an impact on all of us is trade protectionism: he wants to impose swingeing tariffs on imports from China and Mexico, and withdraw from new trade agreements. This would be another disastrous act. It would result in widespread retaliation against American products, higher prices for consumers, and lower growth for the world. For Britain, the ninth largest exporter in the world, such policies would be very bad news indeed.

Yet once again, the voters who have cheered Trump on when he has called for such ill-considered policies are not stupid. They are sending the world a message that even in an economy like America’s, which has created millions of new jobs, there are people who feel left out of a new digital economy and whose living standards have stagnated. Again, they have a point.

The answer to it does indeed require American leadership, just not of this destructive variety. In 1944, at Bretton Woods, the US led the international conference that agreed a stable framework for the world’s financial system that would last until the Seventies.

Today, in a world of unsustainable trade imbalances and unfairly valued currencies, only America can lead the creation of a new period of financial stability – by working in co-operation with China, which owns so much of America’s own debt.

If Trump has passed his peak this week, it is good news for the American presidency. But it would be a bad mistake by leaders all over the globe if they failed to understand the people who have been voting for him.